‪@nickyboardman‬: Iron Man 3 - easily the 2nd best Marvel movie after The Avengers. AVOID ALL SPOILERS! I loved it!

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‪@CrazyCatAddict‬: Iron Man 3 in 3D was brilliant. The different styles in 3D glasses was a nice touch. Loved it

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‪@maxarguile‬: Iron Man 3: best one so far, funny script, great action and effects with a superb twist for The Mandarin. Pointless 3D though.

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‪@LicenseGuruUK‬: Just seen Iron Man 3 - best so far - great cast, FX, action and humour! Well done Marvel!!

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‪@Challies11‬: Iron man 3 was amazing. Keep an eye out for my review in the next few days.

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‪@GazManDoo‬: My whole time line is about iron man 3. I wanna see!!!!!

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‪@TheBimal‬: Iron man 3 was a great movie. Thoroughly recommended!

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‪@Andy__Kirkham‬: Amazing that I got to go to the Iron Man 3 premiere! What a film too!

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‪@LouiseThornsby‬: Iron Man 3 is unreal ‪#coolestmanalive‬

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‪@winklefudge‬: Not perfect by any means but certainly has a lot more substance than the first two and genuine humour ‪#ironman3
‬ ‪@winklefudge‬: It's also surprisingly violent and really boarders the 12 age bracket ‪#ironman3‬
‪@winklefudge‬: Iron Man 3 was a real surprise a bit slow to start but didn't expect it to be how it was overall

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‪@antonbar247‬: im just gonna put it out there Iron man 3 ‪#AWESOME‬ ‪#1weekearly‬

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‎‏‪@Lippyxxx‬: Just watched Iron Man 3... Good film worth a watch

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‪@_laurenmariew__‬: Iron Man 3. OH MY GOD. that is all.

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‏‪@LUUCAAAYYY‬: IRON MAN 3 WAS SO GOOD!

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‪@StaySceptic‬: Just been to see Iron Man 3. ‪#awesome‬

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‪@The_NeilRushby‬: Just seen Iron Man 3. Built story slowly but very funny and kept you gripped to the very end ‪#starreview‬

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‏‪@_Natalie_x‬: Iron man 3 was so epic!!!! thanks ‪@CineSheff‬ for the screening and awesome 3D glasses!!

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‪@TheSlay‬: Iron Man 3 sees the franchise back on track. A better Bond film than Skyfall, and Kingsley's Mandarin's an absolute hoot. Solid 8 out of 10

The negatives--

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‪@StokieSimon‬: Iron man 3....meh. pretty dross really.

The "I'm not sure if it's positive or negative"--

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‪@StuntmanPsyK‬: Iron Man 3 - uhmmm. May have to review it after a sleep because I'm not quite sure how I feel bout it.

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‪@peanutismint‬: Iron Man 3 - Stark is Stark. Baddies are bad. All things considered, a great way to kick off the summer blockbuster season. B-

Contrary to all the twitter reactions posted on here so far I was decidedly mixed on the film. Personally felt it was comfortably the weakest of the three. Those that struggle to suspend their disbelief will have a hard time getting over some of what happens in Iron Man 3. Whilst well made and enjoyable I have many issues, one in particular that I'll never be able to overcome. It's fun, but if you're expecting it to be another Avengers, quality wise...lower those expectations.

Not trying to be too hard on it. What's good is great. The much vaunted plane sequence is absolutely breathtaking.

I'll wait until you've all seen it to discuss specifics. I'll be amazed if it gets over 70% on RT

I think the mainstream will lap it all up. Yet for those of us who are really into this huge Marvel opus they've created, there's things here that are just not good enough.

I'd still give it three stars out of five.

I didn't like it as much as Iron Man 2, plainly because its problems are not getting sidetracked by setting up another film; they're just problems that I can't ignore. It's all subjective. What some will have their head in their hands over, others will really enjoy.

Not trying to be Mr. Negative Nilly here, but what is the ratio of Good to Bad Reviews? Can someone post some more negative reviews? I'd like to get a general concensus.

I've been posting the negative reviews, actually (the others are posted in the speculation thread). Out of all I've posted, maybe around 4-5 negatives and the rest (>50, I think, could be a little less) are positive.

Even that Noel Clarke tweet is actually more mixed-positive than anything. He also said this:

I saw this last night. I thought it was alright. Rdj finally had some dramatic stuff to chew on and he isn't as annoying as he was in the other movies. The other characters? Yeah they're just there. Maya Hansen? I'm sorry why are you in this movie. Black brings it good with the action but eh who cares when the rest is not good. The whole lots of suits thing is just fan service, they definitely weren't needed. The bad guys once again are basically just bad versions of Iron Man but no armor this time. The main villain The Mandarin was decent. Kingsley was eye rolling. Not once did I feel he was threatening or anything. Onto the twist, everyone is talking about it. I didnt know about the leak of it so I went in with an oblivious mind and I thought the main one was pretty bad. It was a twist for the sake of being a twist and it was poorly done and completely unneccessary. There are a few other twists all of which I thought were poorly done and unneccessary. What did I like? Rdj was pretty awesome, loved the action and the new suit. Also the extremis idea for Tony is kinda cool though it makes no sense. It seems that Black tried to make a clever movie and failed. It seems he went in thinking ok this has to be clever instead of the cleverness just coming naturally. He has no understanding of any of the characters which ties into the ending which I both liked and completely hated. I understand what he was trying to do but its a complete 180 for the character and betrays everything we've gone through with him in 3 movies. The action keeps me from absolutely hating this. 7/10

This is a really solid review, **** out of five. Iron Man 3 seems to be shaping up as an instance where many of the critics really get it, while some of the fans missed the boat, the train, the point, etc., and got left at the platform.

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Here is a sentence that as recently as 12 months ago, I never expected to write: the superhero film craze has reached dramatic maturity. I can tell you’re sceptical, so cast your mind back to the summer of 2008, when cinema-goers first queued to see Iron Man.

The attraction, back then, was the chance to see the appurtenances of superheroism on screen: the Iron Mask; the Iron Suit; the Iron Arch-Foes being smelted to a purée. Nowadays people are still queueing, and in still greater numbers if last year’s £1billion global gross for Marvel Avengers Assemble is anything to go by, but beloved characters, not recognisable costumes, are increasingly the draw.

In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Batman’s famous scowl was off-screen more than on it, and likewise, for a significant portion of Iron Man 3, Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark is unmasked and mortal. His new Iron Man suit is a swarm of free-flying components that individually clunk into place on his body, so in some scenes he has, say, a super-powered left leg and right elbow, while the rest of him remains human, vulnerable, and visible.

That’s a great idea for a special effect, but it also means we never lose touch with the man behind the iron. Shane Black, the director, wrote the Lethal Weapon films that codified the buddy cop genre in the late 1980s, and he knows that a raised eyebrow or sideways glance can be more thrilling than any amount of digital whiz-bang.

Iron Man 3 is a direct sequel to last summer’s Avengers film, in which Tony and his super-colleagues feuded with Norse gods and aliens, destroying much of Manhattan in the process. These events have left him prone to panic attacks, and his worries are compounded by the arrival of two new super-villains on the scene. They are The Mandarin, the inscrutable figurehead of a global terrorist group played by Ben Kingsley (below), and Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian, a dashing geneticist with a special virus that turns his victims’ guts to lava.

These two characters have been culled from the comics, but Black and his co-writer Drew Pearce take wild liberties with both, and even viewers who have never once flicked through a graphic novel will be able to appreciate the lateral thinking at play here. In fact, Kingsley’s Mandarin might be the smartest screen interpretation of a villain since Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight (2008), although for very different reasons, and the moment his diabolical purpose is finally unveiled brings the house down.

In that scene, and elsewhere, Black has an instinctive feel for balancing action set-pieces against the passages of soap-opera that are required to make them matter. He also avoids the preeningly self-satisfied insider gags that made Iron Man 2 (2010) such a slog: instead, there are jokes about Downton Abbey and Croydon, and we can all laugh at those. The supporting cast get it, too. Don Cheadle, as Col. James Rhodes, the pilot of Iron Man’s official US military counterpart War Machine, channels the Lethal Weapon spirit, happily playing Murtaugh to Downey’s Riggs; while Gwyneth Paltrow, as Tony’s sweetheart Pepper Potts, may not have been this straightforwardly likeable in a decade.

Seems it's easily better than Iron Man 2, will be widely considered one of the better Marvel Studio productions, and will get enough public enthusiasm to hit 350+ million.

That would be enough to satisfy me. I didn't expect it to be better than Avengers or even Iron Man 1. That would be a very difficult task.

Agreed. It's the overwhelmingly positive reaction from regular people on Twitter that I find really encouraging. Most viewers are connecting with the film and enjoying it without a lot of hand-wringing and obsessing over plot points.

On another note, IM3 will be released in China on May 3. Marvel's Chinese partner, DMG, has produced a 90-minute TV special that will run on state-run channels from now until the film comes out there. This is apparently a very significant thing, unprecedented for a foreign film to be promoted in that way. All this raises the prospects for IM3 to do very well in China.

You don’t have to know the language to figure out Disney, Marvel and China-based producer-distributor DMG Entertainment have pulled out all the stops to promote Iron Man 3 in China ahead of its expected May 3 bow there day-and-date with its U.S. premiere. The movie partially filmed in China and features Chinese stars Wang Xueqi and Fan Bing Bing. The massive PR push includes this commercial for a 90-minute program showcasing the film that will air nationally Saturday night and repeat elsewhere until the movie’s debut. Even 30-second spots are hard to get clearance for in China, so this special touting a Western movie — shot during a gala in the Forbidden City with Robert Downey Jr among others a couple of weeks ago — is notable. Also notable: officials from the government-run State Administration of Radio Film & Television were in the audience beaming over the collaboration, we’re told.

A good relationship with China and Chinese movie goers bodes well for all phase 2 and phase 3 movies.

That's true. One of the Chinese members of the BO forum pointed out that by partnering with DMG, Marvel has pioneered a way to market all of its characters and merchandise in China. DMG is cranking up the marketing machine across platforms, which will benefit Marvel in myriad ways in years to come. Just having a partner who is able to finesse the tricky Chinese film distribution system is a major boon for Marvel. All of Marvel's films and other projects will benefit from this.

The Avengers made $84 million in China. Some are predicting that Iron Man 3 can better that total due to DMG's expert promotion. That would be incredible.

Calling ‘Iron Man 3’ a mixed bag doesn’t really do justice to the heady peaks and interminable troughs in this scrappy but overwhelmingly likeable superhero sequel ... The result is a film which never settles into a comfortable groove. It tries to be an angsty ‘Dark Knight’-style game changer, an ’80’s-throwback action romp, a nudge-wink pastiche and a CG-fuelled spectacular. It’s undeniably entertaining – and worth seeing for Kingsley alone – with the misfires never fully overshadowing the moments of glory.